3 Ways to Get Cool Satellite Images as Wallpapers on iPhone and Android

25 Apr 2015

To be honest, I was never a fan of satellite wallpapers. Earth and other planets from a distance look incredibly boring. But it turns out, I wasn’t paying attention to a sub-culture of satellite photography. The really zoomed in, sectioned, edited, and enhanced wallpaper sub-culture.

Because let me tell you, there are parts of the word that are incredibly beautiful. A rocky, nearly frozen beach in remote Russia that no one is going to photograph. The glaciers of Antarctica. And much more. All of this when captured from the top-down makes for stunning, mesmerising imagery.

A top-down perspective on deserts, sand dunes, crop plantations, farms, and even civilization looks majestic. I think you’re going to fall in love with satellite images now, just like I did.

But of course, there’s a caveat. These beautiful images are zoomed in, cropped out versions of large images. Which means they’re probably more suited for mobile phones than desktops, as you’ll find out below.

1. WLPPR

WLPPR is a new website I discovered at Product Hunt that got me interested in satellite images and got me looking for more such wallpapers.

Right now it’s just a site, but the developers say that an iOS app is coming. WLPPR posts are currently customized for iPhone resolutions, but that shouldn’t stop Android phone users from trying them. In fact, I downloaded many iPhone 6 Plus versions of wallpapers on my OnePlus One and they look amazing.

Just go to the website on your phone, browse for backgrounds, open the backgrounds you like, tap and hold the screen to download them. Then from the Photos or Gallery app you can assign them as wallpapers.

2. Aerial Wallpapers Tumblr

Aerial Wallpapers Tumblr blog is much like WLPPR, only less ambitious. Still, you’ll find around 80 awesome aerial photos of this humble planet. They’re awesome, lot more varied than WLPPR’s collection. And also, less Photoshopped.

All wallpapers here are cropped to 1242×2208, which is iPhone 6 Plus’s native resolution. Again, this shouldn’t stop Android folks from checking these out.

You can download all 81 wallpapers from the Mega link. But be warned, it’s a 232 MB zip file.

3. Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

When astronauts get bored of doing awesome stuff, you know, like living outside planet earth for weeks at end, they fish out their cameras.

Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth is NASA’s ill-named blog that curates such awesome photos. Now granted, these are professional astronauts with maybe enthusiast level photography skills. But they’re one of few people in the universe who can take these photos so you’ll have to make do.

These photos are the full size, zoomed-out kind. A lot of them look boring to me. But some of them, like the glacier collection, are cool.

Spend some time browsing this blog and you might just uncover some hidden gems.